The Overlords of War (21 page)

He opened his eyes wide. Stretched out on the sand before him were three naked bodies, motionless. He took off his helmet, feeling the moist air on his face, and stared at them. Three naked bodies, dead for all he could tell—could this be all that remained of the Council of Uria? One man, two women, like the victims of a dreadful shipwreck, tossed ashore by the tide.

At Corson’s approach, however, the man moved, rising on one elbow to examine him with interest. He smiled. Apparently he had come to little harm.

“Ah, you must be the man from Aergistal,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Corson managed to say, “The Council—”

“Here we are,” the man said. “The Council of Uria for this millennium.”

Corson leaned over him. “Do you need any help?”

“I don’t think so. Why don’t you sit down?”

“But these women—” Corson began, dropping to the sand.

“Don’t disturb them. They’re in communion.”

“Communion?”

“We have plenty of time, don’t worry. It’s a lovely evening, don’t you think?”

As he spoke he was scrabbling in the sand. Now he unearthed a crystal flagon, which he opened and handed to Corson.

“Refresh yourself, friend. You’re looking very strange.”

Corson made to argue, but changed his mind. If this bit of human jetsam said there was plenty of time, who was he to contradict? He set the flagon to his lips. It contained cool wine. He was so surprised he swallowed the wrong way and almost choked.

“Don’t you like it?” demanded the castaway.

“It’s the best wine I ever tasted.”

“Then drink the lot, friend. There’s more. There's always more.” Peeling off his gauntlets, Corson complied. A second swig put fresh heart into him. Then he recalled the place and the circumstances.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I have some field rations with me.” “Thank you,” the man said, "but I prefer somewhat more delicate fare . . . Oh, how stupid of me not to have thought of that. You must be hungry after your journey.”

He rose on his knees, energetically scooped aside more of the sand, and revealed a large silvery container. He removed its lid and sniffed the contents with approval.

“Help yourself. You’ll have to eat with your fingers, I’m afraid, but we lead a very simple life here.”

To Corson’s astonishment, the dish held what looked like half a chicken, garnished with a sauce and vegetables such as he had never seen before. But the smell made him instantly ravenous, and he ate so eagerly it was a while before he was able to utter the words which a moment ago had been at the forefront of his mind.

“I saw Dyoto!”

“A handsome city,” the man said. “If a little out of style.”

“It was at the bottom of a lake. The war has completely destroyed it.”

Startled, the man rose on his elbows and sat up.

“What war?”

And then he began to laugh quietly. “Oh, of course. You come from the time of the troubles. You must have had a shock, but you weren’t to know.”

“Know what?”

“Dyoto was abandoned. That’s all. Not destroyed. It no longer suited the way we wanted to live.”

Corson struggled to digest the information. “And what way is that?” he said finally.

“The way you see. Very simply. We need the opportunity to meditate. We’re getting ready for”—he hesitated—“for the future, I suppose you’d say.”

“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” Corson said, rubbing the greasy traces of his food from his fingers with a handful of sand.

“We certainly need you, Corson. But not here, not now.”

“Are you certain you’re not short of anything?” Corson insisted disbelievingly.

“Do I look as though I am? Do you mean clothes? But we hardly ever wear them nowadays."

“Provisions! Medicines! I don’t imagine the whole of this beach is stuffed with mess tins and bottles of wine. What are you going to do when your stocks run out?”

The man gazed thoughtfully out to sea. “You know, that’s a point that had never struck me. I think—”

Corson interrupted fiercely, “Get a hold on yourself! Are you crazy, are you ill? There must be a way to fish the sea, or game to hunt in those woods! You can’t let yourself die of hunger!”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s very likely,” the man said. Looking Corson straight in the face, he rose with a smooth movement. He was the taller of them, muscular and well built; long hair hung around his face.

“Where do you suppose that bottle came from?”

Embarrassed, Corson rose in his turn and used the neck of the bottle to draw a line in the sand. “I don’t know.”

“When we run short of wine, we shall order more, of course.”

“Ah!” Corson said, brightening. “You live in the dunes and you’ve come to dine on the beach. Back there you have servants or robots.” The man shook his head. “Back in the dunes you won’t find palaces or even shanties, let alone servants and robots. I don’t believe there’s a living soul within forty kilometers. I see you haven’t yet understood our way of life. We have no roof but the sky, no bed but the sand, no curtains but the wind. Do you find it too warm, too cool? I can attend to that for you.”

“So where does this come from?” Corson said angrily, kicking aside the empty bottle.

“From sometime else. Some century in the past or future. I don't know. We decided to let these decades lie fallow. It’s a very pleasant spot to rest and think things over. Of course we control the climate, but in this period you won’t find a single machine on the planet. Those we do need are tucked away in time. When we want something one of us enters communion and asks for it, and the article in question is sent here.”

“What about Dyoto?”

“Some while back, we discovered we had taken a wrong turning. We decided to try another way.” “This one?”

“Exactly.”

Corson stared at the sea. A classically beautiful sunset was in progress, but it was something stirring within himself which made him cheer up. The tideless sea plopped against a rock a few fathoms from the beach like a particularly well-domesticated animal. The invisible sun glowed behind the clouds. By reflex he looked for a moon in the sky, but of course here there was none. The stars, in constellations he had now come to know well, were springing into the sky and shedding their faint light on the world.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the man said.

“It is indeed,” Corson admitted.

He cast a diffident glance toward the women sunk in coma, sleep, whatever, their attitudes suggestive of abandon. He thought he recognized a head of hair, the line of a back . . . Surely it couldn’t be Antonella! He took a pace toward them, but the man checked him with a gesture.

“Don’t disturb them. They’re in conference right now, discussing you. They’re communing with Those of Aergistal.”

“Antonella . . .” Corson said.

The man turned his head. “Antonella is not here. You will see her later.”

“She doesn’t know me yet.”

“I realize that.” The man’s voice was low, as though he was sorry the matter had been brought up. “It will be necessary for her to learn to know you.”

There was a pause.

“Don’t hold it against us,” he said at length, and added quickly, “Would you rather sleep now, or talk over our business?”

“I’m not sleepy,” Corson said. “But I’d like time to think things over.”

“As you like.”

Thereafter for a long while Corson remained silent, sitting on the sand with his elbows on his knees. The sun vanished completely. Stars danced on the water. The air was as warm as his skin. After a little he took off his suit and boots. He did not yet dare to strip completely, but he felt a growing desire to do so, to rush out into the sea and swim away for ever and ever, forgetting about the overlords of war. Tides here must be very weak, with no moon, nothing but the sun to stir the sea.

Then he roused himself and broke the silence. He spoke at first in a rather uncertain voice as though he were alone and feared to disturb the subtle balance of the night or to alert an enemy, then in a tone of greater determination.

“I’m an ambassador,” he said. “Of a strange kind. I used to be a soldier. I’ve traveled in time. I’ve heard the gods of Aergistal. I knew that three dangers threatened Uria—the first a creature like the one that brought me here, but wild; the second a plot hatched by the Old Race of this world against the humans; and the third in the shape of a cavalry commander who sprang from nowhere but whom, according to his own testimony, I called here myself. I’m here to speak on his behalf. And, lastly, I’m an ambassador on my own account. I want to rid Uria of all these dangers, but I lack the means of doing so. I was hoping to find help here, even though Those of Aergistal”—the phrase came naturally to his tongue—“told me not to rely on anybody but myself. Provided I succeed, they promised me, I shall gain my liberty and maybe more than that. But I can see they set me an impossible task.”

“Oh, I know all that,” the man said. “And the task is half accomplished. You haven’t done at all badly, Corson, for a man from the far past.”

“The Monster is caged up,” Corson said, “and the plot has been defeated. But I still have to deal with Veran, the warlord, whose envoy I have the bad luck to be.”

The man burrowed in the sand again. “Perhaps you’d like some more wine,” he murmured politely. “It will help you to relax.”

Corson drank gratefully, then continued. “This Veran literally wants to conquer the universe. He’s asking for weapons, and soldiers or robots. In return he is willing to leave this planet alone. But I don’t trust him. Moreover the Security Office won’t let him do it, and there will be a war. It will take place on Uria, because Veran won’t easily be dislodged.”

“But you are the Security Office,” the man said quietly. “And no war occurred in our past.”

“You mean I—” Corson stammered.

“You’re the Office’s agent for this sector. It’s up to you to prevent the war.”

“It didn’t take place,” Corson said slowly, “because here you are. That means that I succeeded. And the Law of Non-regressive Information has been broken.”

The man was absently pouring sand from one hand to the other. “Yes and no. It’s not that simple. That law is only a special case.”

“Then the future can intervene in the past?”

The man let the sand trickle away between his fingers. “Some interventions have negligible consequences. Others are dangerous. But others still are beneficial, at least from the viewpoint of a privileged observer, like you, or me—or Veran. The control of time somewhat resembles ecology, you know. Imagine a world inhabited by insects, birds, and herbivores. The insects break up the soil and encourage grass to grow, the birds eat the insects and pollinate the plants. The herbivores graze on the plants while their droppings and their dead bodies both feed the insects and manure the soil. That’s the simplest possible ecosystem. You could kill one insect, or a dozen, without worrying, because nothing would happen to speak of. You could kill a flock of birds, or stuff yourself on meat from the herbivores, without unbalancing the system. But suppose you were to kill every insect over a wide enough area—a continent, say. The birds would fly off or die of starvation. The grass would die in a few seasons, and the herbivores would likewise disappear. You’d have a desert. It follows of its own accord if you seriously weaken any link in the chain. There’s a threshold for each point. To you it may appear very high. But . . .

“Well, suppose someone introduced to this imaginary planet some carnivores strong and quick enough to kill the herbivores. At first they would barely be noticeable on the planetary scale. You might scour its plains for years and find no trace of them. But in the long run, not meeting any opposition, they would breed in such numbers that they would reduce the herbivore population. The insects would suffer, then the birds, then the vegetation. The herbivores would be threatened from two sides at once. Then the carnivores in turn would start to die of hunger. If circumstances allowed, a new balance would be struck, quite different from the former and possibly not stable. Then, for one species or another, there would be cycles of plenty and famine. The critical threshold would be much lower than in the first example. Indeed, a single breeding pair of carnivores might be enough to trigger changes whose consequences could not be foreseen. As far as dynamic ecology is concerned, the significant factor is never one of the units in the chain but the totality of them. And the process is incapable of spontaneous reversal. It entrains subtle but decisive side effects. Under the threat from the

carnivores, the herbivores will cultivate speed. The longest legs will save the most lives, and so on.

“To some extent that’s analogous with time travel. But ecological problems are laughably simple compared with those of temporality. You might lay a mountain low or snuff out a star without any serious change in your future. Here and there you might even wipe out a whole civilization with no untoward results from your point of view. On the other hand it might suffice for you to tread on someone’s toe in order to shake your heaven and your earth. Each point in the plenum has its own ecological universe. There is no such thing as absolute history.”

“How can you foresee which?” Corson demanded.

“It can be calculated. It also depends partly on intuition, and partly on experience. And it’s best to look at things from as far away as possible in the future. It’s always more comfortable to consider the various ways that might have led to this present than to try to build one which will lead to a desirable future. That’s why Those of Aergistal enter communion with us.”

He indicated the two women.

“But they can’t tell us everything. They can’t create timequakes that might erase them. They are at the ultimate end of time. For them history is almost absolute, almost complete. Besides, we have to work out our own destinies, even though they must take their places as part of a grander scheme.”

“I understand,” Corson said. “I too have the impression of being a pawn. At first I imagined I had free will. But the more I see of the game, the more I realize I’ve been pushed from one square of the board to another.” He hesitated. “I even thought you might be running the game.”